MAN, THE USURPER
THE winter was a hard one. The skies were persistently and monotonously
dull. A few moments of sunshine were invariably followed by days of
howling winds and leaden skies. Blizzard succeeded blizzard and the
hollows filled so full of snow that it became dangerous for colts to
wander off alone and they clung to their mothers’ sides.
During the short periods of daylight, the horses, the mares, and the
colts broke up into groups and wandered away as far as the deeps allowed
or hunger urged; but each night they congregated in the same corner of
the valley. This nightly congregating kept the snow in one big spot
firmly trodden to the ground and raised two walls with the rest of it,
in the lee of which they obtained the comforts of an airy barn.
Many a night when the shrieking wind overhead poured shower after shower
of dry snow over them, covering them as with a blanket, little Queen,
lying close to the black colt and his white mother, indulged in a happy
gratefulness for the comforts she experienced. Where man thinks and
knows, animals feel. Experience had taught her in sensations and
emotions, which she had not forgotten, what discomfort and
disagreeableness were. The change in conditions which she now
experienced brought into her mind sensations of a gratefulness which
expressed itself in an ardent love for the colt and the white mare, a
love which slowly overflowed toward and encompassed all the horses of
the herd.
The nights were very long. The sun rose and set so far to the south and
the arc it made in its daily course was so small that a drink or two of
her share of the black colt’s milk and the procuring of a single meal on
the deep, hidden grass, spent the day. When the shadows of one night,
driven out by the dawn, came back so soon in the next night and there
was nothing to do but sleep, sleeping became tiresome, and the necessary
shifting from side to side kept the mind awake and active. Impressions
made and forgotten rekindled like embers in the windblown ashes of a
fire. These impressions, varied as they were, and so largely without
order of time or place, were nevertheless as useful to her as experience
is useful to us. It was out of this experience that she built the
individuality of her character, and only those who are totally ignorant
of animalkind can deny that they have character and individuality.
Often the phantom form of the old buckskin mare came to haunt the dreams
of little Queen and always on the following day she pawed the snow less
energetically and gazed wistfully away over the endless prairie snows,
puzzled over the incongruity of her mother’s coming in the dark hours
and never by daylight when she could enjoy her most.
She was comfortable and happy in her second fosterage and thrived well
upon it; yet these persistent dreams of her nights haunted her wakeful
days and in time left on her beautiful head marks of sorrow, vague and
intangible, but unmistakably there, adding a charm to that head that it
never lost.
Then the days began lengthening. The sun climbed higher in the sky and
broke through the spell of winter’s clouds with a smiling kindness that
stirred every cell in Queen’s body. Spring came upon the stern winter as
a rosy dawn breaks upon an unpleasant night. The white-packed hollows
began smiling to cloudless skies with a silent and radiating wetness and
the snows shrank away, exposing brown spots. The earth began to emit
intoxicating odours of growth and the valleys filled with cool,
trembling water. Like living things born in the night these rippling
pools appeared everywhere.
Birds came daily in greater numbers from the south and their songs
augmented the nameless urge that the south winds bore and filled the
desolate wilds with friendliness and goodwill. Before the snows had
completely disappeared, a layer of thick green grass began carpeting the
earth and myriads of delicate crocuses studded the green with
colour-illumined stars.
Long as the days were becoming, the colts found them all too short for
the full expression of the joy that spring was giving them. Nights came
altogether too soon and the vapoury light of early dawn revealed them
already romping over the plains, seeking to rid their joints of the
sleepy feeling that the long winter had given them. In wide circles they
ran, plunging through sloughs, jumping, kicking at the air, pretending
to bite each other in violent anger, stopping only when hunger demanded
it.
Changes met them wherever they looked. The earth itself and all life
upon it seemed to have become an endless play of the forces of change.
Just as each day was in itself a succession of changes, white light
merging into the tinted colours of evening, fading out in night and
breaking again into the colours and the light of a new day, so one day
was different from another and they felt themselves each day changing
from what they had been the day before.
Queen was only vaguely conscious of these changes in herself, and in her
companions, but one change was clearest of all. Most easily perceptible
of all, this change, in a way, represented them all. It was the change
which she one day realised was taking place in the black colt. Something
was very apparently happening to him. His black hair fell rapidly, as
she had realised her own hair was falling; but the black colt was
steadily growing less black, turning white as night turns to day. When
he was white enough to startle her, she realised that henceforth he was
to be white as his mother was. So distracting was this change, however,
that she sometimes looked at him with the feeling that he was another
colt, and in those rare moments she experienced a peculiar depressive
emotion, like the feeling she had experienced when she was standing
before her dead mother, looking confusedly down upon her. Yet she knew
that it was he. There were fortunately other characteristics that
remained unchanged. In time, of course, she got quite used to the change
in his appearance; but she never forgot that he had been black. The
image of him, the picture that rose in her mind when she thought of him
and when he was not immediately before her, was a changeable image which
was black one moment and white the next.
If Queen had been in the habit of applying to every image in her mind
some name, she would have called him, “White-black.” Possibly she might
have added the word or the idea, “big,” for he was much bigger than he
had been; but, since that quality applied to all the colts, she would
probably have left that off.
By the varying degrees of this quality in the many colts, as well as by
the many other qualities she learned belonged to all or to each of them,
Queen knew one from the other. All through the long winter her
companionship had been restricted to the black colt and his mother, but
now, the common desires of youth brought the colts together and led them
in time to abandon the companionship of the mares and the adult horses.
Some of them went back every day to their mothers for milk, but they all
played by themselves and even at night they rested in a group together,
away from their mothers. Though their mothers had their own social life
and activities to occupy them and did not mind the daily absence of
their overgrown foals, their maternal instincts, their anxiety over
their erstwhile babies, was still very great. In spite of this division
of interests, in spite of this habitual grouping, they lived near each
other and at the first sound or sign of danger, they gathered and fled
in concert.
The old desire for her mother, the longing, the urge to go forth and to
seek, had lost what little definiteness it had had and had turned into
an impulse to go, which spasmodically welled up in Queen and sent her
loping over the plains without purpose. Always as soon as he saw her
start away, White-black loped after her and always the rest of the colts
followed. Sometimes the older horses and mares, mistaking the escapade
for a sign of danger, would lope after them.
First happening occasionally, this game began to take place daily and
even several times a day. Just as the colts and other horses got into
the habit of following her, Queen acquired the habitual desire to be
followed.
It happened one morning that the big brown colt led the race. Jealousy
seized at the heart and mind of Queen and she exerted herself to the
very end of her strength to get ahead of him, as if her life depended
upon doing so. She puffed and snorted and pumped away with her thin long
legs, but could not even get abreast of him. Behind her she could hear
the milder snorting of White-black. Suddenly she veered to the left. She
was exhausted and intended getting out of the way of the herd; but she
felt White-black veering with her and knew that the others were
following him.
Quickly she seized the opportunity. She exerted herself with renewed
hope and sped on harder than ever and soon the brown colt found himself
alone. To the left was the whole herd racing madly after Queen, in an
ecstasy of motion. He turned and followed them, trying hard to catch up,
but realising that he had lost. On the other hand Queen had discovered a
trick whereby the newly acquired leadership could be kept, and she meant
to keep it.
Their food grew in abundance wherever they turned. The grass was rich
and juicy; wild plants, sweet and delightful to the taste, grew
abundantly on the hillsides; and water, cool and refreshing, trembled in
every hollow.
Plenty to eat and a great deal of exercise to sharpen the appetite
filled out all the depressions in Queen’s body and because she was too
active to be fat, she became delightfully plump. Her hair now shorter
was sleek and its gloss flashed in the sunlight. Her mane was
luxuriantly thick and wavy. Part of it came down between her ears and
over the white spot on her forehead, down to her eyes, giving her
magnificent head, with the imprint of sadness upon it, a touch of
queenliness that few queens possess.
We all love beauty without being able to say just what it is. The colts
felt a something about her which aroused in them a sort of homage,
spontaneous and unquestioned. White-black, strong and good-natured, kept
the other colts at a safe distance; but they availed themselves of every
chance to touch her, to graze where she was grazing or to run alongside
of her. Sometimes White-black resented the attention some big fellow
offered and started a quarrel which resulted in his defeat. At such
times he would assume the attitude of one who had been convinced of
being wrong. After all he was yet too young to be serious in his love
affairs and his affection for Queen was due more to their having been
reared together than to anything else.
Queen loved them all, but she loved White-black most and every colt knew
it. Many a quarrel ended in his victory because of her attitude rather
than his strength, but he did not know that. Next to him Queen favoured
the white mare and next to her, the old sorrel work-horse. White-black
understood her love for his mother; but he could not fathom her
predilection for the old horse. For a long time, when the old sorrel out
of pure reminiscent fondness approached Queen, White-black would lose
his temper, kick at the old horse and attempt to bite him; but where
Queen sometimes allowed the colts to fight it out between themselves,
she invariably interfered in any attempt to wrangle with the sorrel by
taking part in it on his side. In time, White-black learned to let him
alone.
The lull of the summer began to creep into the long days, and mosquitoes
and nose-flies in vast numbers came to blight the sweetness of the
spring wilds. The mosquitoes, annoying as these bloody little pests
were, were not half so bad as the nose-flies. The very sight of their
long beaks and yellow backs would drive the colts frantic. Grazing
quietly, they would suddenly begin bobbing their heads up and down and
then start away over the plains as if something frightful were after
them.
This murderous pest always started an attack by buzzing around the nose
like a bee, then landing on the breast it would creep up the neck till
it reached the muzzle, where it would quietly settle down. Puncturing a
hole in the tender nose, it would insert its beak and drink freely and
unshakeably, then fly away leaving a hurt that burned for hours. When
they first appeared, the older horses, knowing them, would keep their
noses in the grass as they grazed, or they would, when through grazing,
gather in groups and rest their chins firmly upon each other’s backs,
thus giving the pest no chance to creep up. In time the colts learned to
protect themselves in the same way.
When sultry spells were suddenly broken by gusts of unbridled winds,
which would carry the pests away, the colts would give themselves over
to eating and drinking and merrymaking.
There came a sultry spell in the early days of summer. Every chin was
resting upon some friend’s back. Tails switched ceaselessly and feet
stamped the ground with drowsy rhythm. The air was still. Not a blade of
grass moved. The silence was broken only by the nauseous singing of
mosquitoes and the monotonous droning of nose-flies.
Suddenly there came upon the still, warm air the tattoo of distant
hoof-beats. Two horsemen, coming up over a hill to the south, were just
in the act of separating with the obvious intention of coming together
on the other side of them, when Queen discovered them. Instantly the
group broke up, and colts and mares and horses mixed in a noisy
stampede.
When the older horses wearied of the race, they stopped to look back
anxiously at the pursuing riders; but Queen, in whom the fear of man,
dormant all winter, had now awakened with great intensity, tore away to
the north, snorting as she went, her tail at an angle behind her, loping
as fast as she could despite the heat and the insects.
She came breathlessly to the summit of a rather high hill and turned to
look back. Some of the colts and some of the faster adults were there
with her, but the white mare and the old sorrel were not there. Half a
mile behind them she could see the riders, now facing south; and beyond
them she saw the part of the herd which they had captured.
White-black was standing beside Queen when he suddenly discovered the
loss of his mother. Neighing loudly and distractedly, he started down
the hill after the men. Queen was afraid to go with him, yet she did not
want to let him go alone. She followed him, calling to him as she went;
but White-black persisted. When they got within a quarter of a mile of
the men, they saw one of them turn off to the side and then turn
backward. White-black then realised the danger of continuing after them.
Judging by horses he had known, horses reared in barnyards, the man
thought that it would be a simple matter to get the rest of them, now
that he had captured some of them; but he was mistaken.
It was anything but a simple matter. Queen stopped so short that one of
the colts, following along behind, hurt himself, running into her. With
a stamp of her strong front leg, she turned north and once more led the
race for freedom.
All afternoon they ran as fast as their strength would allow. The smell
of man hung in the air before Queen’s nose, poisoning her blood with
hate of him. She had little time to question, yet her whole soul,
confused by fear and the urgent need to make distance, sought the why of
this two-legged creature, always breaking in upon their peace and always
hurting them.
At last they began to feel that no one was pursuing them and stopped to
investigate. There was not the faintest glimpse of anything on hill or
horizon and in the air there was no trace of man. In the evening they
fed about a slough and at night they slept on the north side of it with
their heads turned toward the south.
Early next morning White-black was seized again by an intense longing
for his mother and braving the terrors of captivity, he started again in
search of her. They were trotting and walking along leisurely, searching
the spaces constantly when they came upon a hill from where they spied a
number of horses galloping toward them. They got frightened and turned
back north, but soon stopped again to ascertain who it was that was
coming, and so these horses gained upon them.
They proved to be three of the colts and a big mare who had somehow
broken free from the cunning little men. They were so excited that they
would not stop to sniff noses. While they passed through the group they
trotted, but as soon as they were on the other side they broke away in a
gallop. Queen and White-black and all the rest caught the contagion of
their fear, abandoned their search for those who were lost to them and
ran with the feeling that danger of captivity had become imminent once
more. And for almost a week they continued their desultory flight.
When the fear of the little men creatures had lost some of its
intensity, White-black and Queen made several attempts to find the white
mare. Her form seemed to flash across the prairies like patches of
sunlight, seen only at the vanishing moment. Often they called loud and
long trying in vain to pierce the unknown and waiting hopelessly for a
reply.
But this, too, was the inevitable, and railing and fretting was no
solution. In time the hunger for his mother shrank back into the depths
of White-black’s limited soul and the full ardour of his love fell to
the lot of Queen. And Queen felt in the touch and the presence of
White-black a compensation for the aches in her soul, which, like
wounds, had healed, but had left their scars for life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------